Comment Re:Brand necrophilia at its worst (Score 1) 81
The whole point of the C64 Ultimate is to combine what was basically about a dozen or more individual C64 retro projects into something that is consumer friendly. If you ever tried to acquire these things, you'll quickly find out they're often made in small quantities by individual hobbyists all over the world, and buying each piece separately you'll find will cost more from all the individual shipping and piece costs.
The company basically scanned the Commodore retro landscape, picked the components that were the best and most manufacturable, and built it. Then put up a company behind it where they package it into a box and then ship it around the world. Instead of someone having to piece it together from dozens of small time indivviduaals, you can basically buy it in one go with effectively free shipping and it's all integrated and ready to go.
What they are doing is capitalizing on the "Offline" part of the brand. The C64 heralds from a time when computing wasn't online and when you aren't bombarded with subscriptions and alerts and other things. And they're leaning heavily into that with the phone - you use it to communicate with others, not doomscroll.
And anyhow, putting together a real C64 already costs a fair chunk of money - working units are several hundred dollars, plus a disk drive, or other parts like an SD-IEC and adapters to modern TVs and replacement power supplies (because the originals have a tendency to short out now and provide more than 5 volts to the 5 volt line, popping all your rare and now unobtainable chips).
While I probably won't get the phone, I did buy a C64 ultimate. It's just nice having it all in one place. It has modern conveniences that get rid of the stupidly slow disk and tape loading (which were slow even when it was contemporary - basically it was software handshaking serial).
And to be fair, at least they're doing something on brand. Not like the dozens of brands bought up by Chinese companies selling all manner of crap bearing RCA, Zenith, Westinghouse and other old school brand names from companies long dead.